There
were weekend reports out of The Sunday Telegraph stating that private equity firms are working to make a buyout offer for Time Warner's (TWX) British magazine unit called IPC.
The Telegraph article even states:
A senior executive at one private equity group in the UK said yesterday: "There is a lot of attention being paid to IPC. People are seriously running the numbers."The price tag for the IPC unit is said to be near $1.5 billion Pounds, or roughly $2.9 billion U.S. dollars.
IPC has such magazines such as
Marie Claire, In Style, Loaded, Nuts, NME and
Wallpaper. While this unit was not one of the ones officially put up for sale, Time Warner has already shown its plans for restructuring and focusing on core operations that will result in the sale of 18 magazines in the US.
The private equity groups that are said to be the most likely are Blackstone, Permira, Cinven, Carlyle and CVC.
Back on September 20, there was an article in the New York Post stating that some 28 parties were interested in Time Warner's magazines unit.
One interesting angle of the private equity group bidding is that this may set the bar higher for the sale of Time Warner's non-core magazine operations in the US that it has already put in motion.
This potential UK sale of IPC could even have some indirect implications for its AOL U.K. unit, although that may be taking this situation one step further than the intent of the news over the weekend.
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